don it; and these assertors and representatives of the dignity of England, in the rear of a flying army, let fly their Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstran ces at random behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries and their menaces, were all despised; and we were saved the disgrace of their formal reception, only because the American Congress scorned to receive them; whilst the state-house of independent Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the ambassador of France!

5. From war and blood we went to submission, and from submission we plunged back again into war and blood, to desolate and be desolated, without measure, hope, or end! I am a royalist, I blushed for this degradation of the Crown. I am a Whig,-I blushed for the dishonor of Parliament. I am a true Englishman, I felt to the quick for the disgrace of England. I am a man, I felt for the melancholy reverse of human affairs in the fall of the first power in the world.

CXXXVI. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

W. W. STORY.

In the following verses we have marked the cæsural pause by a per-pendicular dash. By the casura (se-zu'ra) we understand the natural pause or rest of the voice in reciting a verse.

See in Index, CHIVALRIC, COURTEOUS, DIAPASON, GUTTURAL, OBEISANCE, SESQUIAL TRO, SESQUIPEDALIAN, DACTYLIC, IAMB, PEGASUS, SPONDEE, TROCHEE (tro'ke), STORY.

Delivery. This should be in a pure middle tone, with a marked cæsural pause in every line. In the sixth stanza, there is an opportunity for imitative modulation, expressive of the rhythmical character of the lines.

GIVE me of every language, | first my vigorous English,
Stored with imported wealth, | rich in its natural mines,-

Grand in its rhythmical cadence, | simple for household employment, — Worthy the poet's song, | fit for the speech of a man.

II.

Not from one metal alone | the perfectest mirror is shapen,
Not from one color is built | the rainbow's aërial bridge;
Instruments blending together | yield the divinest of music;
Out of a myriad of flowers | sweetest of honey is drawn.

III.

So unto thy close strength | is welded and beaten together
Iron dug from the North, | ductile gold from the South;

So unto thy broad stream | the ice-torrents, born in the mountains,
Rush, and the rivers pour | brimmed with sun from the plains.

IV.

Thou hast the sharp clean edge, | the downright blow of the Saxon,
Thou the majestic march | and the stately pomp of the Latin;
Thou the euphonious swell, | the rhythmical roll of the Greek;
Thine is the elegant suavity | caught from sono'rous Italian,
Thine the chivalric obeisance, | the courteous grace of the Norman,
Thine the Teutonic German's | inborn guttural strength.

V.

How art thou freely obedient | unto the poet or speaker
When, in a happy hour, | thought he translates into speech:
Caught on the words' sharp angles, | flash the bright hues of his fancy,-
Grandly the thought rides the words, | as a good horseman his steed.

VI.

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Now clear, pure, hard, bright, | and one by one, like to hail-stones,
Short words fall from his lips | fast as the first of a shower,
Now in a twofold column, | Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee,
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, | retreat, trampling along, ·
Now with a sprightlier springiness, | bounding in triplicate syllables,
Dance the elastic Dactylics | in musical cadences on;

Now, their voluminous coil | intertangling like huge anacondas,
Roll overwhelmingly onward | the sesquipedalian words.

VII.

Flexile and free in thy gait, | and simple in all thy construction,

Yielding to every turn | thou bearest thy rider along;

Now, like our hackney or draught-horse | serving our commonest uses, Now bearing grandly the poet | Pegasus-like to the sky.

VIII.

Let then grammarians rail, | let foreigners sigh for thy sign-posts,
Wandering lost in thy maze, | thy wilds of magnificent growth,

Call thee incongruous, wild, [ of rule and of reason defiant;

I in thy wildness a grand | freedom of character find.

So with irregular outline, | tower up the sky-piercing mountains,

Rearing o'er yawning chasms | lofty precipitous steeps,

Spreading o'er ledges unclimbable | meadows and slopes of green smoothness, Bearing the flowers in their clefts, | losing their peaks in the clouds.

IX.

Therefore it is that I praise thee | and never can cease from rejoicing,
Thinking that good stout English | is mine and my ancestor's tongue;
Give me its varying music, | the flow of its free modulation, —
I will not covet the full | roll of the glorious Greek,
-Luscious and feeble Italian, | Latin so formal and stately,
French with its nasal lisp, | nor German inverted and harsh.

Not while our organ can speak | with its many and wonderful voices,
Play on the soft lute of love, | blow the loud trumpet of war,
Sing with the high sesquialtro, | or drawing its full diapason,
Shake all the air with the grand | storm of its pedals and stops.

LLANEOUS

CXXXVII. · MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

See in Index, MOULD or MOLD, SKEPTIC or SCEPTIC, ANGELo, Davy, KOLAN, NICHOL, SMITH, TOULMAN.

1. ALL SORTS OF MINDS.-There is a strong disposition in men of opposite minds to despise each other. A grave man cannot conceive what is the use of wit in society; a person who takes a strong common-sense view of the subject, is for pushing out by the head and shoulders an ingenious theorist, who catches at the slightest and faintest analogies; and another man, who scents the ridiculous from afar, will hold no commerce with him who tests exquisitely the fine feeling of the heart, and is alive to nothing else; whereas talent is talent, and mind is mind, in all its branches!

Wit gives to life one of its best flavors; commonsense leads to immediate action, and gives society its daily motion; large and comprehensive views, its annual rotation; ridicule chastises folly and impudence,

and keeps men in their proper sphere; subtlety seizes hold of the fine threads of truth; analogy darts away in the most sublime discoveries; feeling paints all the exquisite passions of man's soul, and rewards him by a thousand inward visitations for the sorrows that come from without. GOD made it all! It is all good! We must despise no sort of talent; they all have their separate duties and uses; all the happiness of man for their object; they all improve, exalt, and gladden life.- Sydney Smith.

2. A FITTING REBUKE.-"Having in my youth notions of severe piety," says a celebrated Persian writer, "I used to rise in the night to watch, pray, and read the Koran. One night, as I was engaged in these exercises, my father, a man of practical virtue, awoke while I was reading. Behold,' said I to him, thy other. children are lost in irreligious slumber, while I alone wake to praise God.' 'Son of my soul,' he answered, 'it is better to sleep, than to wake to remark the faults of thy brethren.'"

3. ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE. There is nothing short of revelation that more beautifully or satisfactorily proves the existence of an Almighty mind, than the fewness and simplicity of the ultimate clements of animal and vegetable life. Thus, there are but four elementary principles essentially necessary, and but six generally employed, to form every variety of organic life; nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen are the bases, to which sulphur and phosphorus may be considered supplementary.

With these, infinitely varied in their atomic proportions, are built up not only the whole animal kingdom, but also every variety of the vegetable world,— from wheat, the "staff of life," to the poison of the deadly Upas-tree. It is also worthy of remark, that these four

elemental principles are those also of which both air and water are composed, so that air and water may be considered in truth and fact as being the original. elements of organic life. - Dr. Toulman.

4. MATERIALISM. word "materialism."

Mention has been made of the

I hold a maxim on this matter which, personally, I have felt of exceeding consequence. It is time the truth had gone forth, to be held as a maxim forevermore, THAT IN PROPORTION TO THE DEPTH OF ONE'S FAITH, IS THE ABSENCE OF UNEASINESS BECAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. Materialism never arises from knowledge; it is, on the other hand, a certification of deficiency on the part of the mind cherishing it. It consists, not in the exposition of any positive knowledge, but in the dogmatic assertion that beyond the line of such knowledge there lies nothing more.

To deal with materialism, then, what is our course? Never to deny or undervalue truth distinctly laid down, but to deny that what is known is a limit: to deny that the system pretending to be everything is (whatever its special value) the everything it pretends: not to imagine that man ought not to study the laws of Nature, but to show him that beyond these, toward the region of sunset, there are powers which made and sustain even the whole of Nature's fabric, an august Being,even the Father of our spirits, with whom, though the seasons change, and those stupendous orbs rest not in their courses, there is never variableness or shadow of turning. - Professor Nichol.

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5. LIFE.- Of all miracles, the most wonderful is that of life, the common, daily life which we carry with us, and which everywhere surrounds us. The sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons, are as nothing compared with it! Lifethe soul of the world, but for which creation were not!